


Ai Da Yo (It's Love)

by QuillHeart



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blue Jacket, Blupin, Feels, Gen, Lupin Has A Good Heart, Mild Bromance, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Third Person Plural, Rewriting of an existing episode, Suspense, Zenigata doesn't get paid enough for this, Zenigata is a Good Dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 11:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11735799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillHeart/pseuds/QuillHeart
Summary: A retelling of episode 12 of Blue Jacket San Marino and then some, this time with more witty Loop Zoop banter and slightly fewer plot holes. You know, the one where Zenigata tries to get Lupin back from MI6 and they end up in a patrol car discussing love.  (And yes, it'll make you feel warm and fuzzy by the end.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, after seeing a particular post on Tumblr about the events of this episode (that pointed out that MI6 was most likely going to have offed Lupin fairly quickly if Zenigata hadn't come for him), I went back and watched it anew. After discovering that the subs' translation was off quite a bit, the corrected narrative really ended up taking me away with it...and this happened. Just a short fic that is not amazing, but which strives to flesh out the in-between bits and fill in some plot holes. I hope you'll enjoy it despite the discrepancies. 
> 
> (Here is the post, with my re-translation underneath: https://quillheart.tumblr.com/post/170946633042/quillheart-trelobita-xmidzx-blue-jacket#notes )
> 
> After watching the episode a third time for research for this, I realized that there are some temporal discrepancies in this fic compared to what's on screen. Zenigata's clearly at the piazza in the morning as dawn breaks, but...if all the evidence had been cleaned up, how in the world did he end up there? And you're telling me all three bullets went clean through the guys to hit the ground and leave marks...and neither of them died? Okay, anime physics. Okay. 
> 
> So, I changed some things around a little, while attempting to preserve the dialog. Though I gotta say, I'm really curious about whose parking lot that was that Zenigata originally talked to the suits in about Nyx. I suspect it's a real place, maybe the police station or Holiday in Express where the Suits are holed up, but man, what's it supposed to be? Any ideas? In any event, I took it out for expediency's sake.
> 
> Anyway, don't be too hard on this, it's just for funzies. Enjoy the feels!

* * *

 

Zenigata wasn’t sure what he’d find when he went to the designated meeting place.  He was leaning toward a quiet bullet and a loud car trunk, or maybe vice versa.

This may have been San Marino, but they were awfully close to Italy.

But in the back of his mind, he still held a little faith: he was a cop, and disappearing a cop would have a lot more consequences than a random criminal.  Even as a man who went around the world working alone, it was the ICPO he worked for.  He had powerful people who’d come looking for him if he disappeared.  And given that this was MI6 at the end of the trail, doing away with him in any way less than a spotless coverup would cause an international incident the likes of which the British government hadn’t even dreamed of in decades.

So, as he was driven up the winding road to the piazza, the logical part of his brain was reasonably sure he would survive this encounter without an exchange of bullets.

Lupin, on the other hand….

 

 * * *

 The night before had gone down in remarkably old-school fashion: Tracking an at-large suspect’s ass all over town with the clock ticking, only to arrive to find the clock had already run out.

Believe it or not, he’d run into Lupin’s gang down on the flats of town.  They were skulking around in the shadows of a clearly disreputable alley, hanging out watching the nearby mountain.

The fact that Lupin wasn’t with them—and that they weren’t bothering to hide that well—was a troubling sign.  The fact that they didn’t even flinch when Zenigata got out of his car was a worse one.

“Jigen,” He’d greeted tensely from over the car’s roof, since he was closest and arguably the most willing to have a legitimate conversation with someone in authority.  Zenigata hadn’t even closed the car door before speaking to him—he’d merely stepped half out of it, his foot still on the upholstered floor—so that he could reach for his gun if need be.

The hitman, leaning against the alley’s brick wall up to this point with arms crossed, glanced at him from under his hat, the brim tipping up just a little.  The man in charcoal black held his gaze for a moment, then gave a nod of acknowledgement.  The others, behind him and spread throughout the narrow alley, slowly slunk into the background darkness where the street’s light didn’t reach. 

“Where’s Lupin?” Zenigata asked, eyes narrowing.  He didn’t need a long look to realize he wasn’t there—and that the atmosphere held none of its usual energy because of it.

Jigen tilted his chin upward, toward the mountain.

The place he indicated was somewhere behind him; the Inspector gave him a long look—telling him to stay put—and then quickly looked over his shoulder.  Jigen’s line of sight pointed to the piazza at the top of the foothill, one of the city’s famous medieval guard towers.

 _Naturally_.  Lupin loved planting his flag at the highest point in town.

But the fact that Jigen was willing to give that up, without a fight no less…

“Oh…”

Jigen’s voice went off behind him, just a breath.  Then Goemon’s:

“That’s them.”

At the top of the hill, a human-shaped glint of color flung itself through the air.  A girl, it looked like, a flash of golden hair waving behind her as she zipped down a tension cable for the sightseeing gondolas—an act that was no doubt as illegal as it was dangerous. 

And yet, he couldn’t see anyone else from this angle.  Couldn’t hear anything.  It was hundreds of feet up.

“She’s the only one coming? Dammit…”

Zenigata whipped his head around.  But Jigen just tipped his hat down in deference and slid back into the shadows, that trademark lazy smirk cutting a slit across his face.

“If you don’t mind,” the American said.  “That’s my cue.”

But something seemed off about his smile—it was tense, forced.  A moment later Jigen was already in the shadows to the point that Zenigata couldn’t see him. And while everyone else was long gone, Zenigata had no doubt that the man was still there.  He could _sense_ him.

“You aren’t going to help your partner?” he snapped.

Several seconds went by without a sound.  But just as he was about to give up on it, he heard the soft tenor of the man’s smoker’s growl: “It’s between him and Nyx.  But if you want to help, I’m sure he could use it.”

“Dammit,” Zenigata cursed, hitting the top of the car and then running his hand over his jaw as he stared pensively up at the tower, pulling up his mental maps to recall the best way up there.  “No honor among thieves, huh?”

But this time, there was no answer from the darkness. 

Only the voice of his local escort calling his name from inside the car, wondering what the next move was.

 

In the end, he ditched the car where it stood and ran as fast as possible through the winding streets and narrow pedestrian alleys that lead to the top of the mountain.  But by the time he’d gotten there, it was nearly twenty minutes later—well enough time for the trail to go cold again.

Breathing hard, he came into the plaza only to find it deserted.  It was 12:30 AM but even so, someone should have been around given the country’s Mediterranean schedule.  Instead, all the windows were dark and shuttered.

People were hiding in their homes, making sure everyone knew that _they_ knew absolutely nothing.

 _Yeah_ , something had definitely gone down here.

Carefully, Zenigata crept out into the street, looking for cracks in windows and listening for sounds of life—car doors, footsteps, wheels, voices—but there was nothing.  Absolutely nothing but the constant wind that ramped over the parapets.

Had it been a ruse?  He wouldn’t put it past them.  But there had definitely been someone up here, and the sound of gunshots, too.

Two shots in succession to be precise, both from the distinct sound of Lupin’s Walther as he’d run up here.  Even distorted by the twisting distance as it had been, he could recognize it anywhere by now.  What had worried him was the lack of return fire.  That was bad news for somebody; he just wasn’t sure who.

And then he’d seen the blood.

Two large, distinct puddles of it, stretching for several feet across the ground.

Pushing aside the jolt that went through him, Zenigata forced himself to breathe and kneeled down next to them.

If it were all one person’s, it was definitely enough to be fatal.  Even if it wasn’t, whatever wounds had spawned them could easily become that way without a prudent trip to the hospital.

But where…were the bodies?  The fight couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes ago, and Lupin’s crew couldn’t have gotten up here before him; _his_ escort hadn’t even made it here yet….

Zenigata did a quick circle.  They weren’t too far from the edge of the cliff.  Quickly, he hurried over to the ledge and leaned over it, cool evening wind rushing into his face.  But there were, for better or worse, no signs of bodies—or pieces of them—down the scrubby embankment, which was well lit from the city lights partway down.

Still, he called out Lupin’s name just in case.

But there was no response.  Given the direction of the wind, and the lack of other people, even a faint call would have been audible—though his might not have been.

Gritting his teeth, Zenigata went back to the blood, still looking around the square for any signs of life, friendly or otherwise.

Two pools, one slightly larger.  Both of about equal freshness, and big; but far enough apart that they probably hadn’t come from the same body.  And drag marks.  There were definitely drag marks in both of them in relatively the same direction, made before the blood had even coagulated.  But they weren’t parallel.  Definitely at least two bodies.

And the stains didn’t keep going.  They suddenly cut off, right at the street’s edge.

A queasy feeling zipped through him, settling in his stomach.  It wasn’t Lupin’s MO to kidnap his targets; if his group had hit their enemies this well it’d be a rare circumstance indeed for them to haul them somewhere after, especially in a town crawling with people after them.

But Jigen.  Jigen hadn’t had the car, had he?

Zenigata looked around the square for the yellow fiat, and that was when he saw the other string of blood.

It was faint; he thought it just dark shadows at first.  But indeed, on close inspection, it was more blood.  Droplets of blood on the dark blue cobblestones.

They were low velocity marks—almost completely round with no splatter at the edges.  It was clearly a dripping wound, given the way it left a necklace-like trail of marks, some close, some far.

Zenigata traced them along, muttering to himself.  The person had clearly taken a wound, fallen, skittered around on the ground for a bit, then gotten back up—moving several more paces toward the street before being shot again, this time creating the smaller of the large pools.  But, tellingly, there was a small pool from the trail of drips, just before the massive puddle.

Given the low angle at which the droplets splattered and clustered, he figured it was a leg wound rather than an arm one.  The person had gotten to his or her feet successfully—only to then stop and get shot.

Not _grapple and take a hit_.  Just _stop and get shot_ a few moments later.  So speaking to someone?  A standoff?

And old-fashioned execution?

It was possible it’d been a double kill, given the blood.  But assuming it was Lupin and someone else…. Why hadn’t he heard Lupin’s gun a third time?  Even if he’d had it right against someone’s chest, he still would have heard it—and there’d be chunks around to prove it.

The Walther shots he’d heard had been in quick succession.  Too quick and even to indicate hitting two people.  And if there’d clearly been a leg wound and then two major ones later ….

An image was taking shape in the Inspector’s mind, and he didn’t like the taste of it.

Silencers.  The answer was that everyone but Lupin had silencers, and Lupin had only gotten off those two initial shots.  There’d definitely been more than two people here.

And it’d probably been Lupin who’d gotten hit in the leg.  He wasn’t the type for mercy shots _or_ cruelty shots, especially when exacting revenge.  But Nyx probably was, and Lupin was quick, tricky.  He was exactly the type of person you’d want to shoot in the foot in order to apprehend.

“So he’d fallen,” he muttered to himself, tracing the line of red in the air with his finger.  “Backing up on his hands and knees here.  Then got to his feet, and…”

He stopped at the nearer edge of the blood puddle and looked up.

He was facing the windows of a totally dark office building, of which one window was a tiny bit open.  No one was there now (he hoped), but a curtain was billowing in the breeze.

He groaned, his hand automatically running over his stubble.  His eyes flickered down at the cooling red masses, surfaces rippling darkly in the wind, and flashing ruby where the light sparked off it.  “They came to take down their mad dog, didn’t they?  And he was the wolf chasing it….”

In front of him was the other pool of blood, just about four feet away—chest level, if a tall man, standing on the curb, had fallen toward him.  And so Lupin’s puddle…

He’d gotten hit from that window, possibly by the same bullet that had hit Nyx first.  He’d definitely fall to his knees after, and then…?

A hush falling over him, Zenigata looked around for bullet casings.  There were none, which just proved his theory that there was a crew of people involved here who wanted to cover their tracks.  But there _were_ grooves.  Etchings where bullets had hit the stone and scraped it.

Three of them, all coming from up high, given the angle of impact.  All three had gone straight through flesh, given the bloody bits immediately around the stone scars.

But most importantly…all three were going in different directions.  It wasn’t just hitting a bone and ricocheting. There were three different shooters.  It hadn’t been a protracted fight, he suspected, because they’d all come from _different buildings_.  Just one, two, three, and then two bodies on the ground in the middle of the night, fallen next to each other.

“Oh Lupin…” he mourned, a tight breath escaping his lungs.  “Are you even still…?”

 

It took him a good minute to collect himself, but he eventually started looking around the outskirts of the plaza for further clues.  The bullet casings from Lupin’s gun, for one, or the slugs from other fire. 

That was when he’d found Lupin’s car, and the men beside it.

Suits.  The lot of them.

Lupin’s cheery yellow fiat was partway down the hill, on the bend, smashed up against the guard wall of a long way down and crawling with human ants.  He’d been coming up the hill by the looks of it, and given that there was another, black government sedan with tinted windows equally dinged and abandoned behind it….

“Unbelievable.”

…He’d been chased up here.

And given that that girl had escaped….

“Inexcusable.”

...It was clear that he’d then been cornered like some common criminal with no one to help him and shot in the street.

“These bastards.”

And then they’d disappeared with him somewhere.

The nearest suit looked up and saw him.  Zenigata stared back, jaw clenched tighter than his fists.  He’d probably only have one shot at this, if he hoped to get back anything other than a corpse and some BS paperwork full of rubber-stamped lies.  So he dug into his pocket and pulled out the papers that were going to throw him right into the middle of Lupin’s Russian Roulette game.

Papers with the name _Justin Persons_ on it.

 

 * * *

That had been about twelve hours ago.  He’d listened to the police radio and called the precincts, but the incident at the plaza hadn’t gotten an official peep.  He’d called his boss, too, just to keep him up to date when he’d gotten back to the local station, but what he’d gotten was:

 _“MI6?  Christ, how’d the little monkey manage_ that _?”_

“Fuck if I know.”

_“Well shit.  Does that boy have any sense?... Guess not, if he poked that nest and didn’t run.”_

Zenigata just sighed.  “Knowing him, he ran _toward_ it.”

 _“Did he_ know _that was who he was dealing with?”_ his boss came back with, incredulous.

“I suspect so.”

_“Christ!”_

“Yup...”

_“Well, maybe this case’ll close itself.”_

Zenigata rubbed the bridge of his nose.  The man’s sudden switch from enraged bureaucrat to effervescent relief was not helping.  “Chief, don’t say it like that….”

On the other end of the phone, he heard his boss heave a heavy sigh.  _“You’re a good man, Zenigata.  Don’t make me lose a good investigator over a case that may already have resolved itself.”_

The Inspector sighed too, though of a different flavor.  “Roger that.”

_“Godspeed.”_

“Uh-huh.”

Zenigata closed the phone and tossed it onto the empty seat beside him.  “Fuck.”

 

*** 

MI6.  Of all the intelligence agencies, it was probably the most likely to keep its promises simply on the basis of the British sensibilities of the individual operatives.  But no intelligence agency was ever anyone’s friend.  And heaven help him if there were some racist assholes on the force who found out Lupin was half Japanese.  It was bad enough that they were both associated with France.

“Kanon have mercy,” Zenigata muttered, getting out of the car. 

The sun had risen long ago, but Zenigata had only gotten two hours of sleep at a time at most.  And when he did, all he had dreamed of were terrible things.

 

***

“Tell you what,” the suit began as he had stood beside the yellow fiat under the two AM stars, his arm resting on the hood.  His fellows stood around him, not approaching, but watching carefully from where they were cleaning blood and hotwiring cars.  “You burn all the info you have on that guy and swear to never speak of it again, and you can have your thief back.”

“So it’s something that important, huh?” Zenigata forced a smile.

The man’s own smirk fell.

“When,” the Inspector pressed, putting everything back into his inner pockets and making an effort to sound nonchalant, professionally amiable.

“Whenever we want.”

His smile jerked upward.  “Now.”

“Hah.”

“Bring him back, _now,_ or I’ll go right to the BBC.”

The man chuckled tensely, looked at his fellows, then leaned into his earpiece slightly, his curled fist leaning on it. 

Zenigata waited, wishing he could hear the noise.  But he couldn’t.  He could only imagine the shadowy figure on the other end, or perhaps the entire control room of them.  He wasn’t sure which one he wanted more—a single asshole with its whims, or a room full of people who couldn’t make their own decisions.

By the time the breeze ramping over the hill had died down for a moment, the operative’s face had turned to business-efficiency stone when he turned back to Zenigata.  “Forty-eight hours.”

“Twelve.”

They stared at each other for a bit.  Zenigata, eyes bare, was determined to set those sunglasses ablaze with the force of his gaze alone.

But the Caucasian man’s blank face was apparently because he was listening to his earpiece.  After a moment, he tilted his head back slightly.  “Thirty-six.”

“Are you kidding me?” he almost laughed at the audacity of it.  “You are a British intelligence agency in what’s basically Italy.  What leg do you think you have to stand on, holding a _French_ citizen?”

“Is he now?” the man said, crossing his arms and leaning back on the car.  “Last I heard, he was a nationless terrorist.  Unless you want to _come with me_ and give me your info….”

“Six hours,” Zenigata growled, crossing his arms as well, “because I assume there’ll be traffic.  Or you could tell me which medical facility you’re patching him up in and I’ll take custody of him from there.”

The suit raised an eyebrow, but then stated, “You assume an awful lot about his custody, Inspector.”

“Yes, I assume you’re not breaking the Geneva Convention, is that a lot in this day and age?  How far you Brits have fallen.  I’m sure my boss at Interpol will love to hear all about that.”

Very slowly, the man’s head tilted back, presumably so that he could look down his nose at him.  Zenigata waited, his own chin lifted.   Around them, the other suits were frowning; he might have managed to strike a chord, finally.

“…I should like to remind you that we have more money and friends than you and around here, money moves the world.”

Zenigata took a long, long breath as he ground his teeth, and then made a show of letting it go, jaw clenched.  It was true; and _he_ was the one who’d left his guys with only vague directions to find him.  Assuming he could even trust them, which he never did all the way in places like this.  “Fine.  Twenty-four hours, but you bring him back alive and functioning.”

The man turned his head aside as the wind hit; lips pursed, he was clearly listening again.

And then, after a long, long few seconds, he nodded. 

“Deal.”

The knot in Zenigata’s stomach fell like the coastal wind had whisked it away.  “Tell you what,” he said as the wall of black backed off, back to its tasks.  “A show of friendship.  How about twenty-eight.  Six AM tomorrow.  I don’t want to keep meeting you shadows in the dark.”

“Fine,” said the man, waving over his shoulder.  “I don’t think I need to tell you that we’d be perfectly happy never seeing you again, either.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact - "Nyx" is the ancient Greek goddess of the night. Whereas "to nix" something, in English, means to destroy, stop, or obliterate it. (Nix was the original English sub way to spell his name...which eventually was determined to be wrong because of a visual in this episode.)

* * *

 

Lupin had been in the middle of a sentence when Nyx had suddenly grimaced and staggered forward.  Vaguely, he’d recognized the sound of two bullets hitting the bricks to either side of him as he tried to catch him, but it wasn’t until Nyx had fallen to his knees that it really processed.

A split second too late, the gears turned in Lupin’s head.  If he hadn’t been speaking, it probably wouldn’t have taken as long to switch tracks, but either way, when Lupin looked up to the windows behind Nyx, it was already too late.

The bullet ripped through him; he felt it go clean through.  Burning, he sank to his knees and clutched at his front, but try as he might to hang onto consciousness, it was incredibly hard.  Things were already narrowing as he felt the telltale rush of falling.

The next thing he was aware of was that his face was against the bricks.  He hadn’t been out long; it was more that his consciousness had stuttered. But if a bullet went all the way through, depending on where it’d hit, he may have only a few moments to do something about it.

He needed to _move_.  But one, two, three breaths later and no second bullet came.  For now, the marksman was done, whoever he was.

_Of all the days to leave Jigen behind…._

To be fair, he was never the type to bring Jigen to watch his back on his dates.  But maybe he should have, given who his date was.

In any event, if he was lucky, Rebecca was safe for now and the crow was already leaving its nest.  He didn’t want to wait for it to come at him with a knife to the back of the neck.

Growling in pain, Lupin pushed himself onto one arm while holding the other over the wound, pushing the thick fabric of his jacket down against rent flesh to clot the wound.  The fibers were soaked all the way through within seconds. 

He grit his teeth, forcing himself to breathe through his nose against the pain, against the swarm of dots in his eyes.

_I have to…have to--!_

But the amount of stone before him was daunting.  He was on the wrong side of the piazza statue to hide, and with the fact that he was barely hanging on to consciousness, there was no way he was throwing himself off the embankment and hoping for the best.  He’d been shot in the leg and now in the torso; he wasn’t going anywhere, let alone surviving it. 

“Dammit,” he croaked, gritting his teeth.  At least he didn’t feel blood there—yet.  “I guess it’s time for plan B, huh…?”

He looked for his Walther—he must have dropped it when he blacked out for a second—but it was just out of reach near his knee.  With his vision tunneling and fading, it was too hard to keep track of in the shadows.  Not that his hand was even going where he told it to.  He reached, but it was sloppy, and—

It was kicked away.  First his hand, then the gun.

He couldn’t feel it.

“You,” said a voice.  A male voice, and not Nyx’s: He could see Nyx was lying on the ground next to him, barely conscious if at all, but still somehow looking angry as hell.  “Have caused enough trouble.”

The familiar cold of steel came to rest against the base of his skull.

Slowly, Lupin’s staccatoed breath came to a halt, and it felt as if his heart did, too.  He waited, slowly spreading the fingers of his visible hand in compliance.

But his wound _hurt_ —white-hot throbs taking over his mind in intermittent flashes.  He gritted his teeth, swallowed hard, and then his breath came back at a pant.  There was so much white in front of his eyes all of a sudden that he could barely see, hear.

“You…really gonna execute me here, like this?” he challenged at the pair of shiny, patent leather shoes.

His gun was picked up, as were the miscellaneous casing and slugs around him.  A flurry of feet and then, just beyond Nyx: tires.  The arrival of a black van.

“I guess you’ll see, huh?”

“Bas…tards.”

“Your guys coming to get you?”

It was perfunctory feet that swirled around him; Lupin shut his eyes and forced himself to reach for any breath he could get.  Were they going to take all the evidence and just leave him here in the street?  He wasn’t sure what was more of an insult—being left to die, or them taking up enough time talking to him that he didn’t get a chance to patch himself up once they left. 

“Guess…you’ll see,” he admitted, fist clenching against his heart sinking.  Blood was spilling down his fingers as his heart pumped, no matter how hard he pressed.  In fact…was his hand even pressing?

“Guess so.”

The gun removed from his skin and was replaced by a swift kick to the wound.

Lupin screamed and gritted his teeth to silence it, but somewhere in between the hands around his biceps and the open car door, he lost his grasp on consciousness.  He never even felt the leather of the seats he was going to bleed his last over.

 

* * *

 

It was the height of Summer, so dawn came around five AM at the Mediterranean.

 _I hope those four hours don’t cost us,_ Zenigata thought as he walked up the stairs to the now infamous piazza.  He knew it was irrational—whatever _extra_ horrendous things they were going to do, it was gonna happen in the first two or three hours, when everyone’s blood was up.  But he still felt terrible, giving even that much extra time to someone’s captors.  The fact that he hadn’t been able to extract Lupin immediately had weighed on him all day and all night. 

His conscience was ready to make him pay for every imagined slight against Lupin’s flesh.  Now, though, the question that remained was to see how much of it had come true.

Zenigata reached the plaza with more than a single hit of adrenaline.  But there was nothing there now—just the occasional commuter on the sidewalk, or elderly man feeding the birds.  The previously open window was closed, and even the blood on the cobbles had been washed off, probably by them just after he’d left with the locals, he realized dryly.

And hadn’t that been something.  Just a gaze at the work they were doing, and then a nod.  The driver had looked at Zenigata, and he had nodded back.  Just nods all around, and then he’d, grudgingly, gotten back in the car.

 _“You try to kill me, I’ll haunt you,”_ he’d grumbled as he’d gotten in the passenger seat, arms crossed.

 _“Why would I do that, Inspector?”_ asked the young man with a tired smile.  _“You’re our honored guest.”_   Then he glared past Zenigata through the side window to the suits, tisking.  _“It’s them who’re spilling blood on our peaks.”_

This morning, the sun was still wane, giving everything a pale, heavenly glow.  As he gazed at the land sweeping below the overlook, wind whipping his coat, he hoped it wasn’t a sign of things to come.

The Brits didn’t appear to be here yet.  But that was to be expected; he was a half-hour early and they had no incentive to be anything but right on time—if they came at all.

So he sat down at an outdoor café and ordered tea and a biscuit. His stomach needed settling, and his brain needed a distraction.  It’d be a shame to die on an empty stomach if they chose that route, but it also wouldn’t be enough to slow him down if he had to run.

So Zenigata watched the sun rise over the valley in the colors of his tea and waited for the unknown message that he was here.

It turned out, however, that the man was here _for him_.

About five minutes in, a man with coffee and a newspaper sat down opposite him out of the blue and, crisping his paper, announced, “Twenty minutes.”

 _This is some serious spy bullshit_ , Zenigata winced, as he looked at the man’s hands—making sure nothing was going to come through that newspaper at him.

Zenigata took up his spoon and stirred his tea, idly.  Everything as requested?” he asked back, trying to dredge up his old field tricks for undercover contacts.

“As requested,” the man affirmed disinterestedly.

The breath Zenigata sighed was more like a wave, his body suddenly felt so light.

_So he’s still alive…._

“You still interested in your end of the bargain?” asked the man, bursting Zenigata’s bubble of bliss.

“What do you take me for, you?” Zenigata huffed.  “If it gets me my suspect back, then yes, I am.  If not, I’m only interested in kicking your ass.”

“Watch how loud you bark, little dog.  The wolf has a noose around his neck and if he gets too excited, he might strangle himself….”

“You rotten—”

“I can do this all day.”

Zenigata tisked and looked away, sipping at his drink angrily.

The Brit folded his newspaper and stood.  “Fifteen minutes, around the corner, where the fiat was.  A black van will be there.  Wait across the street, and we’ll bring him to you.”

 

A prisoner exchange in the middle of the goddamned street in broad daylight.  Would the wonders never cease with these people?

Well, there was a small comfort to it, at least: Zenigata had three local units with him; if they decided to flip sides and shoot him, at least several important someones would see it and they’d have to do the work of buying them off.

“I might actually get out of this alive,” he muttered to himself in Japanese, as he leaned against the San Marino squad car, arms crossed.

“What’s that?” asked the young patrolman next to him, different from the night shift one of before.

“Nothing.” He lifted off the car.  “Let’s go.”

The new, sleek van of evildoings was here, and just as they’d said, Lupin’s car was not.  As he walked across the barricade block of street to the halfway mark, he couldn’t help but think it looked a little like a hearse.

The sound of a gear shift from the black van, and the engine turning off.

Well, that was good sign that a drive by wasn’t about to occur, at least.

The front passenger door opened and a brunette man in shades with a ridiculous shoulder-length haircut that looked similar to a bad decision from a Renaissance painting stepped out, speaking into his ear piece. He approached Zenigata with a hand up, indicting for him to stop.  Feeling no need to pick a fight just yet, Zenigata did so, eyebrow raised.

The fact that they had enough energy so deep into this operation to be this aggressive was rather astounding.  And, if he could hope, a sign that the MI6 cohort had spent the night sleeping, rather than beating Lupin into submission.

And that Nyx guy…who the hell knew what they were doing to _that_ poor bastard.

Zenigata took a breath and waited for the back doors to open, hands idling in his pockets.  With any luck, all his deductions about the fight would be wrong, Lupin would come out smiling, and all the worry would be for nothing.  He couldn’t help but think, though, about what they did to him, if that puddle of blood and three snipers was what they did to their own people.

After waiting at least a minute with no further action on the Brits’ part, Zenigata turned to the sky and sighed.  “How many chains you _got_ him in?” he asked the suit beside him.

He wasn’t really expecting an answer, but the man turned to him and, after a moment, said, “None.”

“What?” Zenigata hissed.  “Are you idiots?”

He looked between the man and the car a few times, until he suddenly found the back doors opening.

He swore he could hear the man beside him smile.  “You’ll see.”

Zenigata’s eyes widened at just the moment a third pair of feet in white slacks appeared beneath the bumper.  Stumbled, were dragged.  A flash of blue, snapping in the wind from the terraced hill behind them.

Lupin.

It _was_ him, wasn’t it?  Those thin wrists, dark-haired head hanging.  The bright, flashy colors rippling in the wind—

…and covered in large, rusty blotches.

It was more than enough to be called alarming.  Blood stains, several the size of softballs, littered the front of his jacket, and his entire right pant leg was dark from a particular spot downward.  As they came closer, Zenigata noticed they’d wrapped his chest, but he had no shirt on.  They’d just thrown his jacket over his shoulders and brought him here, it looked like.

Zenigata’s teeth gritted.  How many wounds were underneath those dressings?

A pair of suits he’d never seen before brought the thief over; the man next to him, with the tall man with the bad haircut, crisply took up Lupin’s left side.  

And Lupin, for his part…

They’d basically carried him over here.  There were no bruises on his face, which was a small blessing, but that meant little with people like this.  He was currently in handcuffs—a symbolic gesture at best with Lupin, it was true—but the man was making no joke of it this time.

He was doing nothing, this time, in fact.

As Lupin was presented before him, Zenigata kept waiting for him to say something, but he never even acknowledged his presence, nor even seemed to know where he was.  He was just staring off into space somewhere near Zenigata’s abdomen, eyes tired and dull.

This wasn’t what he’d bargained for, and the realization crept over him the more he looked over Lupin, the feeling of unease twisting at Zenigata’s stomach and building into anger. 

But really, what did he expect with these people?  He was just lucky Lupin was alive.  Which he might not be for long, if they kept him on his feet like this.  He was pale.  Deathly pale, and blinking slowly, jerkily, like he was either drugged or about to pass out.

At first, Zenigata had thought it was just a show of compliance—which was odd enough for the man—but it wasn’t.  He really wasn’t all _there_. 

As he held back the urge to touch him, Lupin tipped forward a little, but one man jerked him back by the arm and the other—the brown haired one—smacked him in the chest.  Lupin flinched a bit, shook his head out, then went back to staring at nothing, swaying on his feet.

All without making a sound.

“What is the meaning of this?” Zenigata demanded, voice almost incredulous.  He was vaguely aware that his eyebrows were pushed down in a vivid show of alarm, but that didn’t matter now.  They’d see his anger, his sense of betrayal, and they’d _eat it_.

The answer was quick and defiant, courtesy of the suit on the right with the Rembrandt haircut: “We’ll transfer Lupin into your custody, Inspector, if you will immediately cease all investigation into our business.”

That had been the deal, so he wasn’t surprised to hear it, but it had barely registered.  He shrugged as a quick answer of affirmation and stepped forward, intent saving the suspect from any further damage as he stood there.  “Let’s go, Lupin,” he barked, the words harsher than he would have liked, for how telling of his emotional state they were.

Lupin, for his part, looked up a little at that, his name perhaps bringing him out of his stupor a little. 

_What have they got you on…._

Zenigata reached for him, possessively.  But before he could even bring his hand out of his pocket, the suit with the stupid haircut stepped between them.  The sight of his prisoner, so downtrodden, being eclipsed by this guy’s annoying face did nothing to help Zenigata’s temperament.

“Inspector Zenigata,” the suit stated, “Please state your answer.”

“Lupin the Third is my goal,” Zenigata growled, indignant and internally vowing poxes upon their entire organization.  “I have no interest in whatever you’re doing behind the scenes.”

A beat of silence, where Zenigata mustered all the professionalism he could and the other man mustered all the ability to be a wall that he could.

And then:

“All right.” 

The man stepped back, apparently getting whatever answer he needed from his shadow king and revealing Lupin to him once more.  Zenigata took a step forward, placing himself right in front of Lupin’s face, unwilling to be blocked off another time.  He had a feeling that if he didn’t get to Lupin now, today, the next time he saw him, it’d be in a body bag.  If at all.

The spindly little thief looked up at him then, finally showing the first signs of life.  “Pops…” he noted.  It sounded a little like a question.

Zenigata sighed, something in his heart aching at what had come—and what had yet to be done.  “Hmph…you look like shit.”

Lupin blinked slowly, but there was no happy wit returned to Zenigata.  The little miscreant just yawned, then grimaced in apparent pain.

Then, alarmingly, he pitched forward, clearly dizzy.

“I said functioning!” Zenigata snapped over Lupin’s head as Lupin fell into him.  The suits let him go like it was a practiced maneuver, and Zenigata’s hands wrapped around him protectively to catch him.  Against him, Lupin winced—whether at the impact or the noise, he couldn’t tell.

The suits, however, were unmoved.  “You never said how well,” said the one to the left.  The one from yesterday that liked to negotiate.

Zenigata growled, ready to pounce, but they’d already turned toward their vehicle.  After a moment of glaring, Zenigata figured he’d better do the same.

“C’mon,” he offered, propping Lupin up and finally getting a hand around his elbow.  He drew the man forward, and with a nod, another of the San Marino escort took up Lupin’s other side, propping him up more than making sure he didn’t escape.

Lupin’s arm.  Lupin’s skin.  When was the last time he’d touched it?  This phantom he’d been chasing for years, a living, breathing bit of skin and bone in his hands.

This was justice, taking hold of a dangerous criminal element, wasn’t it?  Putting the lid on something dangerous?

Of course it wasn’t.  Not like this.  As he held Lupin’s arm, he could feel how weak his pulse was in the crook of his elbow.

_How did I end up saving you from death?  When I’m supposed to be the one ending your evil sprees?_

Lupin, for his part, only sighed, like it was only going to lead to more harassment.

For now, it seemed, the god of thieves had left Zenigata a mere mortal man to take into custody.  And perhaps that was for the best.

Though he realized, distantly, that it was a little disappointing as far as his career aspirations—of _course_ it wasn’t _him_ that took Lupin down, but Lupin’s own appetite for crazy stunts—Zenigata also found himself currently fraught with worry more than anything.  Maybe it was just the basic instinct to make sure his suspect survived long enough to question, but Zenigata was worried about him.

“It’s all right now, I’ve got you,” Zenigata whispered to him reassuringly.  “Can you walk?”

Behind them, the unmarked van rumbled to life and slowly drove off—no gunshots exchanged.  Zenigata nodded at the others and they moved the barricades aside for them—while watching his back.

Lupin, again, did nothing but blink slowly, breathe slowly, and then sigh.  “N’ really.”

The man’s exhausted voice was so unexpected that it caught Zenigata off guard for a moment, garbled and soft as it was. 

“All right…c’mon then.”

He liked to think he was the kind of man who would be kind to a prisoner that was complying with instructions, no matter how much pain that prisoner’s crimes had caused.

How else were you supposed to reform them?

Lupin’s hands were cuffed, so it’d be awkward, but he managed to get Lupin’s arm around his shoulder and his arm around Lupin’s beltloops to support him by the waist.  The thief moaned in pain at this—squeaked and hissed it really—but put up with it.  Whatever they’d done to him, it looked like he was going to behave for now.

Which was helpful, but terrifying.


	3. Chapter 3

Zenigata got his suspect deposited in the car and then the old police chief buckled him in, the man instructing Lupin in surprisingly soft-spoken Italian.  When Lupin was told to, he put his hands on his head, then brought them down again—apparently he was lucid enough for that, though it took him a while and a lot of hissing.

“What the hell did they do to you?” Zenigata snapped as soon as he got in the car.  He buckled his own seatbelt, angrily, then tapped on the glass in front of him.

Lupin, his eyes closed and face a grimace, shrugged.  “Havv’n’t slept.”

“You…haven’t?”  It wasn’t all that unexpected, but it was still a dick move to use on somebody who was _bleeding massively._   And when he factored in the fact that Lupin was nabbed at night…he probably hadn’t slept in at least forty-eight hours.  No wonder he was—

“Lost…lotta blood,” he continued unexpectedly, taking a deep breath that sounded piteous and suspiciously weak to prove the point.  “Can’t…get ‘nough…air.  Feels like?”

Zenigata shook his head and motioned to the driver.  The man nodded, and Zenigata turned back around, inspecting Lupin’s countenance.  He really looked pale up close, and covered in a sheen of grime and sweat.  “It’s a long drive to the nearest hospital, especially in traffic.  You think you can hold on till then?”

To be honest, he didn’t actually know if Lupin’s wounds were still bleeding.  He wouldn’t put it past them to change the bandages on the way here to cover their asses while simultaneously giving him a time bomb.

Lupin’s eyes opened just a little, focusing on the ground between his legs.  “Yeah,” he whispered hoarsely.  “But…” he looked at his hands, brow furrowed.

His hands were shaking heavily, even sitting in his lap as they were.

“Have you eaten anything?” the Inspector asked quietly.

Lupin shook his head, then sighed and leaned back.  He had ended up sandwiched under his two other passengers—the Inspector and a local precinct captain—since he was the smallest and in the middle.

“Hot,” Lupin complained quietly as they got going.

“Here,” Zenigata offered, pulling him forward.  “Rest on us.”

As the Inspector pulled him forward, however, he felt almost searing heat through his hand.  “Shit, you’re burning up.” He put a hand against Lupin’s forehead, then his neck.  The man swallowed hard underneath Zenigata’s fingers; his heart was beating thickly. 

In the end, the Inspector pulled Lupin’s head against his shoulder to rest; Lupin, rather surprisingly, just sighed and lay there, pliable.

“Mmmn,” he slurred appreciatively.

Zenigata glanced over at the old police captain, but he wasn’t listening; he was just staring straight ahead, letting Zenigata have his prisoner.  The inspector licked his lips, then looked down at the furry head on his shoulder.

<“You don't have to tell me what they did—I won’t ask it of you,”> he whispered in Japanese.  He lifted a hand, but decided against setting it in Lupin’s hair; there’d be no good way to explain it if it came up in paperwork.  <“But if you want to talk about it, tell someone—I’m here.  Just ask for me, and you can get it off your chest, off the record.  Whether you’re in the hospital or a cell.”>

<“Heh…”> Lupin muttered.  <“You ain’t…getting nothin’…outta me…coppa,”> he wheezed.

Zenigata sat back and grumbled, but Lupin continued:

<“But thanks, Pops....”>  He swallowed hard, sucked in another breath that was far too deep.  For a while, they drove down the curves of the mountain, Lupin panting and forcing his eyes closed against the hairpin turns. 

But when he spoke again, out of the blue, he was speaking in French: “Don’t…’member it all.  Blacked out in the car.  But…woke up, table…”

Zenigata’s eyes widened slightly, and his heart rate quickened.  But he stayed still and staring straight ahead at the seat in front of him for Lupin’s sake.  Lupin, for his part, was still draped against his shoulder, so the two couldn’t see each other.

“Didn’t use any drugs…when they dressed the wounds,” he offered.  “But they used a lot after…”

He still sounded exhausted and short of breath; his thin chest was expanding hard against Zenigata’s shoulder.

Zenigata tisked and crossed his arms, Lupin's ragdoll weight moving with him.  No wonder he was sick and exhausted.  They’d used treating his wounds as preliminary torture, then put him through the wringer without food, sleep, or, apparently, much clothing.

It made him grit his teeth, thinking again about evidence what lay under those clothes.

“There were chains,” Lupin added, to which the Inspector frowned.

He didn't make it sound like standard-issue prison belt chains.  “And a table…in a room...ev’ryone work ‘round.  So _bright_ …”

Lupin’s left leg was resting against him.  Through the clothing, Zenigata could feel tremors going up his muscles.  The thief shook his head and rubbed his eyes, cuffs clinking as he did so.  “Heh…’m not gonna give them a good yelp review…”

Lupin continued to mumble things with a smirk that became increasingly inaudible and multilingual, his head lolling onto his chest.  As much as Zenigata liked the idea of free info—and him pliable—this was just painful and unnecessary.  He sighed and pushed Lupin’s head back against the seat.

“Go to sleep, Lupin.  I’ll wake you when we get to the hospital.”

“Mm mn,” he muttered, already half there.  The head under his hand was feverish, but didn’t resist in any way.

In a couple minutes, his breathing had evened out.  Zenigata let him lean against him for comfort for as long as he wanted, clearly asleep as the car rolled down the switchbacks.

 

* * *

 

The scenery was going by.  Beautiful mountains and their trees in the sunlight, with peaceful and storied villas perched upon the sable-colored hills.  All was quiet in the car; Zenigata’s Italian wasn’t the best, so the locals kept to themselves a lot.  And out of respect for Lupin, or simply out of exhaustion, the entire car was quiet.

Zenigata, for his part, was lost in his thoughts.

He turned away from the view and down to the man leaning heavily against him.  It sent a little giddy thrill through him, realizing just who this was in his car, asleep against him.  He smiled, despite it all.

_I’ve finally caught him, haven’t I?_

The suspect he’d been chasing for _years_.  Actually beside him now, in the flesh, handcuffed.  Not _his_ handcuffs, but good enough for now.

But as his eyes tracked up from those wrists that had picked a million locks to the man that owned them, his smile fell. 

He watched Lupin’s battered chest move, feeling his sickly heat against him.

 _But I didn’t catch him._ They _did.  They just_ shot him _, and I’m picking him off the ground…._

He looked up and down Lupin’s form.  To be so close to the real skin of the man of a thousand faces…

 _I’ve still won_ , he thought, a small flutter of elation bubbling up to replace the lumps in his stomach.  _Justice won, today, in the end._

Because he’d stuck through it, the man wasn’t dead.  Wasn’t buried in a ditch, having been tortured to death for the crime of crossing the wrong people.

He’d been so worried about ever getting to see him extracted that he’d had no room for this.  To notice how monumental this was.  How proud he should be, of himself, and all of law enforcement.

But that lead to the next part: understanding, and then doing something with him.

 _Why_ , came a thought a moment later, _was this able to happen?  Where’d Lupin slip up?_

He wasn’t vain enough to think he himself had anything to do with Lupin’s capture.  It had been between Lupin and MI6 this time.  And that made his blood boil, his adrenaline spike—in the end, a frickin’ spy agency had to bring him down, and they’d done it handily.

Things were a lot easier when you were willing to play dirty, he supposed.

But Lupin had been alone.  With Jigen and the rest, it wouldn’t have even happened.  So why…?  Had they abandoned him, or had he sent them away?

And the girl he’d seen going down that cable…

With a small tingle in his gut, he realized with some horror that Lupin had perhaps told them _all_ to go away.  So…so he could get revenge?  Or because he thought the five of them couldn’t win against the might of the entirety of MI6?

He looked over at Lupin again, just to confirm he was truly there.  That specter that haunted his nightmares…

But, it begged the question once more: _Why?_

Before he could think any further on it, the car hit a pothole, jolting them all.  Lupin instantly startled awake, his arms and legs flailing—and then going stiff wherever they landed.

His nearly elbowed Zenigata in the chin.  The old police chief and the foreign Inspector were instinctively on him, trying to restrain him, but Lupin just struggled harder.

He was making panicked, incoherent noises.

When Zenigata realized this, he backed off and told the chief to do the same.  Luckily, the man complied, minus a hand to the mouth, but Lupin soon found himself free—though unable to go anywhere.

Zenigata put an arm over the thief’s thin chest to steady him; Lupin’s sharp blue eyes looked over, suddenly still and white as a sheet.

Confusion turned to recognition, until Lupin took a deep breath and sat back, nodding to himself.  After a moment of quiet, Zenigata released him, and Lupin rubbed his eyes.  He yawned, too, only to wince and curl around his stomach wound.  He was shaking, as he pulled his jacket around him.

“Where did they hit you, anyway?” Zenigata asked, craning his head around.  There were bandages all over Lupin’s torso; he laid a palm on his abdomen, then went searching around until Lupin cried out in pain.

When he pulled back his hand, there was red on the bandages. 

“Shit,” Zenigata muttered, alarmed.

Lupin took a deep breath, trying to steady himself.  It was shaky as hell.  “They didn’t…do more than a patch job,” he answered, eyes feverish and pained.  He glanced at the ceiling, swallowed down a groan, and then panted like he’d run a mile, his head back against the seat.  “Don’t think…they thought…to keep me ‘round…much beyond a couple days.  Hospital soon, yeah?”

For a minute Zenigata worried it was a leaking chest wound, but that wouldn’t make any sense.  He wouldn’t be alive, let alone talking right now, if it had been.

Lupin grit his teeth, rather haggard eyes, pressed his palm against his side.  “Got me right in the artery,” he muttered.  “Or damn close to it.”

Shit, they hadn’t been playing around.

“How are you still alive?” Zenigata muttered, shocked.

Beside him, the old police chief, who had been watching all this, tapped on the glass and spoke in Italian. The car sped up, and its lights turned on.

“Falling correctly,” Lupin muttered back, sighing through his nose.  He lifted a hand.  “Legs just went right out from under me, couldn’t control it at all. Pain, blood, loss of consciousness…the whole shebang.  But landed lucky, I guess.”

Zenigata’s eyes narrowed in concern, especially as Lupin’s breath hitched and he grimaced again.  “You still got all your organs in there?”

“For now, I think.” Lupin groaned as he sucked in another dizzy breath.  “We’ll see, I guess, eh? Those antibiotics are gonna be hell on my stomach though.”

He winced, but Zenigata rolled his eyes.  “Not outta the woods yet, eh?  Making me worry like this…picking you up from MI6 of all things… What the hell, Lupin.  Do you never think of me and the trouble you put people through?”

Lupin’s response was to smile just a little, when Zenigata bothered to look for it.  “Listen to you.  You sound like you’re scolding a kid who took the car without permission.”

“You got shot, Lupin.  Twice, yeah?  ‘S a bit worse than a totaled car.”

Lupin shrugged; Zenigata settled back into his seat and crossed his arms, his hat falling down his forehead slightly.

“You’ve got the luck of the Devil, I’ll give you that,” Zenigata grumbled, while Lupin’s breathing evened out.  “What were you doing though, anyway?  What in the world possessed you to go up there alone, fighting an agent?  I know you play at it but Lupin, you’re not a spy, you’re a thief.  I saw your gang and they were terrified.  They left you to die up there.”

“Terri…you saw them?” Lupin’s eyes blinked open and settled alertly on the Inspector.

“Lead me right to you.” He shrugged.  “Have you no sympathy for others in your unending quest for glory?  This shit’s dangerous for me too, you know.”

“Well…” Lupin sighed again, shoulders heaving.  The car sped along; he winced at every bump and hairpin turn.  “About that.  I didn’t go up there thinking I’d come back down again.  Not entirely.  I was being pursued…”

“By that Nyx guy, yeah?”

“You know about that?  Ain’t that above your paygrade?”

“Yes and yes,” Zenigata stated.  He pointed at Lupin’s wound, half intent to poke it to make his point.  “And above yours, too.”

“Wow…you’re lucky too then.  To be alive…and not disappeared.”

“Like you?”

The cop turned to him.  Lupin gazed into his eyes, tellingly.

And then he turned away.

“So…what?” Zenigata continued, after Lupin scratched at the back of his neck idly.  “You were selling your life to the highest bidder?  Or some secret?”

“It was my wifey,” he said, smirking.  “I wanted her to be safe.  I’d take a few bullets for that.”

Zenigata rolled his eyes.  “A woman you met a month ago, specifically to con.”

“Hey, don’t judge.”

“Uh huh.”

After what he’d been through to get him, Zenigata had expected a little bit better than this bullshit, so he nearly missed it when Lupin cracked his eyes open and, staring at the floor mats, quietly added: “She’d have died, if I didn’t stay behind.”

Zenigata eyed him, suddenly sharper.    “Why?  Why is that Nyx man after her?”

Lupin’s eyes flicked over, coyly.  “Can’t tell you that, Pops.”

Zenigata sucked in a breath and growled it out.  He clenched his jaw, eyes rolling again.  Lupin must have been doing all right, if he was getting like this; perhaps the drugs they'd shot him up with were wearing off. Glancing at the thief’s wound, the red didn’t seem to be spreading any further along his bandages, which was a good sign.

“So to save your guys, a fire sale on your life, huh?” he grumbled.  “That’s not like you, Lupin.”

Lupin shifted a little, with a grimace.  "I know, it's shameful."

He seemed both honest and flippant, somehow.  Zenigata eyed him, annoyed.

"You even got MI6’s hackles up.  What the hell did you steal, anyway?"

"Actually, I wasn't working this time around."

Zenigata scoffed.  It was impossible that he'd get into this much trouble for no reason. "'Not working,' you say."

"I know it's stupid," Lupin began with a gentle smile, amused and pleased with himself, "but I procured a worthwhile 'little something' out of it anyway."

“Oh yeah?” Zenigata intoned dryly, not even bothering to look at him as he listened. “And what's that?”

Lupin’s voice floated over to him across the car seat, sounding suddenly light as a feather and boyish like a cherub. “Isn't it obvious?”

The Inspector frowned slightly and looked over at him, quizzical at the sudden change.  "Hm?"

“It's Love,” he whispered.

After all the danger he’d navigated the last few days, the look Zenigata saw nearly knocked him over.

Lupin’s face was practically glowing.  The sort of look you got only when someone who wore their heart on their sleeve was standing at some happy pinnacle and resonating that charm out into the world.

Boyish and handsomely serene, with a backdrop of the beautiful, verdant countryside going by—it was a state anyone would envy (minus the ancient-looking cop in the view next to him). Lupin’s facial lines seemed much more delicate all of a sudden, from his brows to his lips.  A fey creature, gracing earth with such beauty for just a moment…. 

 _Why, oh why_ , he found himself thinking, _must this man be a criminal?_

When he looked like this, it was hard to peg him as one; it was easy to see how he conned people.  But on the other hand…even Zenigata had to admit, could a man who looked like this, had the power to inspire people like this, and was entirely aware of both, be expected to stay out of trouble?  Probably not.

It was…alluring, that happiness.  But not in a way he begrudged. 

Lupin wasn’t about to share his handful of cards with him.  But he was showing him this one, at least.

_So you do have a heart, under there…._

Zenigata looked away, feeling like he was seeing something he shouldn’t be privvy to.

_If only we could have met in some other way...._

But if Lupin wasn't a criminal, and a criminal this high-profile...would they have ever met?  Would his life have been as fulfilling?

No, it wouldn’t have.

  _…I think we could have been good friends.  Taught each other a lot._

But such was the nature of the divine, he supposed.  Zenigata sighed and glanced back.

Lupin stopped his bashful, close-eyed smile and looked up, as if looking through the front windshield.  But he wasn’t.  He was looking somewhere further than that: at some distant memory, brought close again.

_Maybe we met in a previous life, somewhere…._

For a moment, Zenigata could almost see what he was feeling:  The love of a land, a place, a person, all in one. 

_…And I’m supposed to help you._

And his own wishes, reflected in that person's light.

_…Or you’re supposed to help me._

Love.  That was love on a young man's face, all right.

 _Sigh_.

_From an international incident that almost would have certainly ended with you dead, to love, in twenty minutes flat._

It was then that Lupin noticed the Inspector’s sour look and flashed him a cocky grin, playfully glib as he settled back into his nook: “Well, you probably wouldn't understand, Pops.”

Zenigata raised an eyebrow, gruffly.  "If I hadn't negotiated for custody of you..."

_Those puddles of blood…._

_“Forty-eight hours.”_

Zenigata glanced down at the red stain in Lupin’s bandages.

Slowly, his voice turned light and soft, trailing off incredulously: "Do you know where you'd be right now...?"

Lupin looked over at him—looked that incredulity right in the eye and then scanned him up and down—and then smiled.  Genuinely smiled, that little cherubic grin he’d developed lately. 

And he smiled it all for Zenigata and Zenigata alone.

"Yeah," the thief said, looking at his lap and then settling back in against his escorts’ shoulders.  "I guess you’re right."

Lupin laid his head against the Inspector and yawned, just as the car finally reached the flats. "Thanks, Pops."

He sighed contentedly, and Zenigata, after a moment of hesitation, finally rested a hand over Lupin’s own, which were cupped loosely in Lupin's lap. His skin was less feverish than it’d been before.

_My thief’s in love, huh?_

Just a little while longer now, and the next phase of their lives would begin.  Lupin would be in the justice system, and Zenigata…

Zenigata would…what?

_Maybe I can convince him to give this all up, then.  Make an honest man out of him, for her sake.  I’ve heard stranger stories._

As the San Marino countryside drifted by on a warm summer’s day, Zenigata put his chin in his hand and rested his elbow on the windowsill.

_Love…_

He smiled defeatedly, and glanced Lupin’s way.

_It’s a nice thought, anyway._

“You’re welcome,” he found himself saying to that sleeping form, “you ridiculously troublesome monkey.”

Against his shoulder, Lupin’s only response was a sleepy smile. 

“Love you too, Pops.”


End file.
